As we begin another long spring and summer in Worcester without playoff hockey, we can, as we’ve done far too often over the years, look back at all the “what ifs” of the past season as other teams and fan bases move on to hockey’s second season.
Depending on how you define it and count them, the Railers left between six and 12 points on the table this season. Because Worcester finished just two points out of the playoffs, each point they missed out on turns out to be huge. Yes, they did steal some points from opponents, but that’s what their job is: to gain as many points as they can while giving away as few as possible.
And over the years, the Railers have been really bad at that.
The easiest way to gain an extra few points in a season is to be better in the shootout. Worcester had exactly one shooter score goals in shootouts this season, with Connor Welsh scoring three times in five attempts. The rest of the team went oh-fer-14. Their 15% shooting accuracy was 25th of the 28 teams that participated in a shootout, and exactly half of the ECHL’s 30% average.
Railers’ goaltenders were 15th of the 28 shootout teams at 69.4%. Michael Bullion was best on the team at 76.9%, but the biggest issue there is that four divisional teams, Trois-Rivieres, Maine, Norfolk, and Reading, were all better defensively in the shootout and were all in the ECHL’s top six.
Head Coach Nick Tuzzolino also needs to choose his shooters better, perhaps putting guys out there with at least a chance to score as opposed to treating it like some sort of reward for hard play. He also needs to put his best shooter first, as the math says the team to score first in the shootout usually wins.
Another area that Worcester needs improvement in is defense. No team in the North Division gave up as many goals as the Railers’ 248 this season. They were tied with Atlanta for 12th in the Eastern Conference, leading only Greenville’s 251. Only four teams, Greenville (3.49), Rapid City (3.68), Utah (4.06), and Allen (4.32) averaged more goals against per game than the Railers (3.44).
Worcester defenders allowed too many unchallenged shots on goal, many times leaving players wide open near the net for easy deflections or to score on rebounds. Add to that way too many soft goals allowed, especially early in games, and the Railers were constantly needing to dig themselves out of holes.
The face-off circle is another place where Worcester really needs improvement. Even though the ECHL doesn’t officially track the stat and the Railers don’t usually release their own numbers, two seasons ago, Jake Pivonka was just about as automatic as you can be in winning draws. They didn’t have any such center this season, and it showed in lots of pressure situations. Those kinds of guys are hard to find at this level, but Tuzzolino really needs to dig deep and find a solid face-off man.
If he can find one that’s good in shootouts, he can kill two birds with one stone.
The Railers also need to play more disciplined hockey. The number of ill-timed, silly penalties they took was a significant problem. It’s one thing to be a hard-nosed team that takes penalties by playing aggressively, and it’s another to not know when to reel in your emotions and play smart hockey. Add to that a worse-than-average penalty kill, and you’ve got issues, which is exactly what happened to Worcester.
Odd-man rushes, both offensively and defensively, could also use some work. The number of two-on-one or three on two rushes for Worcester last season, where they didn’t even generate a shot attempt, was far too high, happening multiple times per game. You can’t score if you don’t shoot, and odd-man rushes are a great way to score because there should be at least one uncovered guy in the zone. Just watch the Railers’ opponents; they usually have no issue finding their free guy.
Something that probably won’t change for 2025-26 but absolutely needs to happen in seasons after that is the DCU Center needs to open the dates of the final weekend of the ECHL regular season for the Railers to use. Since the COVID shutdown those dates have been blacked out by the DCU Center for the potential of other events so they can’t be used by the team.
It appears the arena was empty while the team was in Reading, or at least there’s no listing of an arena event taking place. In 2024, it was held open for Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey Circus, in 2023 it was Jurassic World Live Tour, and in 2022, the arena was empty for the final Saturday and Sunday of the regular season. The Railers are the DCU Center’s primary tenant, and should have the pick of the weekends that work best for them to be successful as a franchise on the ice and a business off of it.
Luckily for Worcester it appears their biggest issue took care of itself with the Islanders firing, oh, wait, “not renewing the contract of” Lou Lamoriello. It’s a safe assumption that Chris Lamoriello will be out as GM of Bridgeport too as there has never been a statistical worse AHL general manager in the 89 years the league has existed. Some still drink the Lamoriello Kool-Aid. Very few of those people live in Lowell, Albany, Bridgeport, and Worcester.
The good news for the Railers is they have finally found the right guy to be head coach and general manager. There’s no need to run down the shortcomings of the guys to held those posts before because, mostly, it’s unimportant in the long run.
What’s important is Tuzzolino now has essentially a full season of both jobs under his belt, and knows what works and doesn’t work. Hopefully he can smooth out those rookie head coach bumps in the road, hire a capable assistant, and put together a team that’s ready to go from day one of the regular season.
Because those games are just as important as the last few, and with one or two extra wins in those early games, we’re playing hockey in late April of 2026.
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